Nothing constant, nothing changed
by lilu13
Summary: You have to expect the unexpected when it comes to Atlantis. You'd think the daughter of one of the founding members would know that now wouldn't you? OC Angst with just a smidgening of Lorne oh my :S


Author says: This is my first story so any reviews, even if they are pointing out where I've gone wrong, would be gratefully received. It would also make me stupidly happy grins like a little monkey. Thanks to my beta for the help. Thanks to you for reading and hope you enjoy x

Disclaimer: None of the stuff that is in the show is mine. OCis though, mwuha:D

She had grown up on Atlantis. That in itself had caused division at first. How could it ever be right for a little girl to grow up seeing all the things she would inevitably see? The questions were pointless though; there was nothing on earth for her. She and her dad were inseparable. Her father was needed in the city and in her own little way so was she. People had forgotten what it was like to see everything in white.

As, she grew up, she'd amassed quite a following too. Everybody in the city felt the need to protect something and nothing spoke of damsels in distress quite like a small child with bright eyes and a strange attachment to all things electrically charged. She had family.

It changed; of course it did. The doubters were right in their own little way. Nobody could protect her forever, and the time came when she was exposed to exactly the things her dad, hell, the whole city, was trying to protect her from. It was unfortunate, but it was necessary. Most importantly, it didn't break her. They tried – the Wraith, the Genii; countless other faceless enemies, it all came with the job of being the only daughter of one of the most important people in the city, the weakest link. In a place full of military and combat ready scientists, it only made sense. So yeah, she was a target. But she was never a victim, and that made her strangely proud.

She had trained up along with some others from the "second generation" popping up all over the city, and was pretty high up on the security team now. With time it would become their job to protect all the bright-eyed kids bouncing around the place, and she was beginning to understand why Liz was so worried all the time. But also with time, came experience and she got to recognise why people need personal defences too. She had been wrong on occasion, she made mistakes, most of which she learnt to live with. She grew to understand the hard eyes, the snappy one-liners; anyone who's been there can see the shadows behind both of them.

She had been wrong again. The most devastating thing about growing up is realising that the grownups; your parents, the people you most admire in the whole wide galaxy, are human with real flaws and insecurities. After realising this she had thought that she was prepared for anything, that nothing could surprise her – hell she'd been up against a freaking super-wraith and survived. But she was wrong, and all this; this long introduction, this explanation of a journey from innocence to understanding, leads here, to this point; to a soldier whose hard eyes are lost behind a vacant stare and one-liners have been swallowed by nonsense and insane ramblings. To one Major Lorne, sitting quivering in a corner, oblivious to the world outside his virus-ridden body.

It was nothing like the Wraith virus, just a simple strain of some kind of alien malady that appeared to screw human physiology into the ground.

_'Hey Lorne. Should you be out of the infirmary?'_

His head had snapped up, but there was still no response. She was going to go right ahead and say something witty, pull him to his feet and alert the powers that be, but there was something that stopped her. In his eyes there was something she had never seen before. Despite all her time and experience she couldn't even put a name to it. It was everything she felt everyday; pain, love, hate, joy, hope, sorrow…regret. And it was only then, crouching down, that she saw the blood.

_'Oh God Marcus, what have you done?'_

Looking him in the eye, she was trying to keep her voice calm but the panic was building, Lorne was a trained soldier, a pretty good one at that, and god only knows how many people he could have come across on the way there, but her heart stopped dead when he met her eyes and opened his outstretched palm.

_'Where did you get that? You need to tell me now Lorne'_

He started rambling again, eyes clouding over as he clutched the blood stained stethoscope in his red tinted hand, rocking and murmuring. The calmness was gone now as she drew closer to the officer, shouting.

_'Snap out of it Major, this isn't about you anymore! Now tell me – what did you do!'_

This time when the eyes snapped up, there had been clarity.

'_He wouldn't let me go. I had to make him be quiet'_

Her heart stopped for the second time. Her blood ran cold and all those other clichés there are for that one moment of realisation, a pure, freezing wave of fear spreading through the body like some floodgate being lifted. She ran. She'd known it from the moment she had seen the blood, but she had hoped, and now she ran, desperately trying to contact him on the radio. But then again, she also knew there would be no response.

She drew to a stop right outside the door, preparing herself. Thinking it open, it was the smell that hit her first. The medical smell sure, but it was the copper mainly, that kind of metallic smell you can almost taste. Then it was the sound as she walked. She was sure her boots shouldn't be making the small squishing sound she heard as she stepped in. She knew that she should have turned around right then, waited for the others to come, let them have this memory, this smell. But instead, she looked down and she followed the crimson river as though it were a pathway, across the floor and round the bed, where dead eyes lay open and a bloodstained hand was outstretched towards the radio just out of reach.

For all her bravado and all the things she'd seen, all the things she had learnt and thought she had become, in that moment Keira Beckett had never felt more like that little girl. Except now there was nothing here for her either.

_'Daddy?'_


End file.
